Interior Minister says multiplication of political parties has fuelled divisions and weakened social cohesion.
Published On 29 Jan 202629 Jan 2026
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Burkina Faso’s military-led government has issued a decree dissolving all political parties that had already been forced to suspend activities after a coup four years ago.
The West African nation’s council of ministers passed the decree on Thursday amid the government’s ongoing crackdown on dissenting voices as it struggles to contain insurgencies linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS).
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Burkina Faso‘s Interior Minister Emile Zerbo said the decision was part of a broader effort to “rebuild the state” after alleged widespread abuses and dysfunction in the country’s multiparty system.
Zerbo said a government review found that the multiplication of political parties had fuelled divisions and weakened social cohesion.
The decree disbands all political parties and political formations, with all their assets now set to be transferred to the state.
Before the coup, the country had more than 100 registered political parties, with 15 represented in parliament after the 2020 general election.
Burkina Faso is led by Captain Ibrahim Traore, who seized power in a coup in September 2022, eight months after an earlier military coup had overthrown democratically elected President Roch Marc Kabore.
The country’s military leaders have cut ties with former colonial ruler France and turned to Russia for security support.
In 2024, as part of its crackdown on dissent, the government ordered internet service providers to suspend access to the websites and other digital platforms of the BBC, Voice of America and Human Rights Watch.
As it turned away from the West, Burkina Faso joined forces with neighbouring Mali and Niger, also ruled by military governments, in forming the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in a bid to strengthen economic and military cooperation.
“This is what you can expect from Lockheed Martin: continued significant investment to advance technology development and produce proven major weapon systems at ever greater scale. We build on this momentum with a powerful start to 2026,” CEO Jim Taiclet said during a quarterly earnings call this morning. “Lockheed Martin products, once again, proved critical to the U.S. military’s most demanding missions. The recent Operation Absolute Resolve [in Venezuela] included F-35 and F-22 fighter jets, RQ-170 Sentinel stealth drones, and Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters, which helped ensure mission success while bringing the men and women of our armed forces home safely.”
After the conclusion of Operation Absolute Resolve on January 3, video footage had emerged showing at least one, and possibly two, RQ-170s arriving at the former Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico. This was a major hub for aircraft employed in the operation and had already offered very strong evidence of the Sentinel’s involvement.
The U.S. military subsequently confirmed that F-35s, F-22s, and Black Hawks – the latter belonging to the U.S. Army’s elite 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers – among many other types of aircraft had taken part in the operation. While mention was also made of the use of drones, the RQ-170 was not explicitly named.
F-22s and F-35s, among other aircraft, seen in Puerto Rico after the conclusion of Operation Absolute Resolve. USAF
A now-deleted post in December 2025 from Air Forces Southern (AFSOUTH) on X, which included a picture of an individual wearing a name patch with an RQ-170 silhouette and the sleeve insignia of the 432nd Wing, had prompted earlier questions about whether the drones were operating in the region. The only units known to fly Sentinel are the 30th and 44th Reconnaissance Squadrons, both of which are assigned to the 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. A total of between 20 and 30 RQ-170s are said to be in the Air Force’s inventory.
The exact role the RQ-170 played in Operation Absolute Resolve remains unclear, and Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet offered no further details. TWZhas previously detailed how the mission and the lead-up to it are exactly what the Sentinel was designed for. As we wrote:
“RQ-170s would have provided a valuable way to discreetly track Maduro’s movements and otherwise establish his ‘patterns of life,’ as well as those of the forces guarding him, for an extended period of time in the lead-up to the actual launch of the operation to capture him. During the mission itself, having one of the drones orbiting overhead would have provided an indispensable source of real-time information, including to help spot threats that might unexpectedly appear. Those same feeds would also have given senior leaders, including President Donald Trump, a way to watch the operation as it happened.”
…
“With all this in mind, RQ-170s could also have surveilled Venezuelan military bases and other sites that U.S. forces struck as part of the operation overnight, and helped with post-strike assessments. The Air Force has disclosed having at least conducted tests in the past of the Sentinel in the bomb damage assessment role in combination with B-2 bombers.”
Since then, it has also emerged that the U.S. military planning for the mission included preparations to destroy three airfields in the country if it appeared that fighters belonging to the Venezuelan Air Force were attempting to scramble and intercept the raiding force. That threat did not materialize, and none of those facilities were ultimately struck, but it would have been necessary to closely monitor them to be sure.
Multiple Venezuelan air defense assets were also struck at various locations in the country during the operation. TWZhas also highlighted previously how suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses (SEAD/DEAD) would have been a key mission for the F-22s and F-35s in the force package. U.S. Navy EA-18G Growlers, and likely at least one U.S. Air Force EC-130H Compass Call aircraft, also contributed electronic warfare support to this mission and other aspects of the operation.
The RQ-170’s participation in Operation Absolute Resolve adds to the still relatively limited publicly available information (and even less that is officially confirmed) about the use of these drones over the years. The U.S. Air Force only officially acknowledged the Sentinel’s existence in 2009, two years after it was first spotted in Afghanistan and had been dubbed the “Beast of Kandahar.”
RQ-170s were used to monitor aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, something that was thrust into the public eye after one of the drones went down in that country in 2011, a major intelligence loss. RQ-170s likely also played a role in relation to the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last year, where they could have provided direct overhead coverage and intelligence for post-mission bomb damage assessments.
Sentinels are understood to have surveilled Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan in the lead-up to the raid that led to his death, which also occurred in 2011. This, as well as operations over Iran, are prime examples of the Sentinel’s ability to persistently surveil key sites even in denied areas. The preparations for and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve also followed a playbook with direct parallels, as well as notable differences, to the Bin Laden mission.
Between 2022 and 2023, Sentinels may have flown missions in the Black Sea region, gathering intelligence on Russian forces on the heavily-defended occupied Crimean Peninsula. A satellite image available through Apple Maps showing an RQ-170 at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy has lent some further credence to those reports. Sigonella has been and continues to be a hub for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance flights over the Black Sea. It is unclear when the image was taken, but it looks to be from a relevant timeframe based on the visible state of construction elsewhere at the base.
A satellite image showing an RQ-170 at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Italy. Apple MapsConstruction seen at Naval Air Station Sigonella in the same Apple Maps image that shows the RQ-170s. A review of other imagery shows a similar degree of construction throughout much of 2023. The physical break seen here between the taxiway extension work and the existing taxiways to the north was still present until at least April 2024. Apple Maps
Though much still remains to be learned, the remarks today from Lockheed Martin CEO Taiclet have added a small, but notable addition to the story of the RQ-170.
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The recent declassification of the United States’ Jumpseat spy satellite provides details on what was previously a highly secretive system, one that monitored critical Soviet military assets during some of the tensest years of the Cold War. While still redacted, the declassification provides never-before-seen imagery of a pioneering system that served the U.S. intelligence community for 35 years.
Jumpseat satellite taking shape in a factory. NRO
The declassification of certain elements of the Jumpseat program was announced by the director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the Pentagon intelligence branch responsible for U.S. government reconnaissance satellites.
There were eight satellite launches under Jumpseat (also known as AFP-711), between 1971 and 1987, one of them unsuccessful. Developed by the U.S. Air Force as part of the NRO’s Program A, the satellites were carried by Titan IIIB launch vehicles. Based on an original intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) design, these rockets lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base (now Vandenberg Space Force Base) in California.
System for Space – Titan III (remastered USAF documentary)
The NRO confirms the mission numbers 7701 to 7708 for the eight Jumpseat launches. Analysts had previously attempted to match the Jumpseat missions to known space launches out of Vandenberg, although so far only the first and last of these have actually been declassified. There is a possibility that some of the launches normally assessed to involve Jumpseat actually carried other payloads.
The NRO confirms our belief that there were 8 JUMPSEAT launches in 1981-87. and gives the dates for JUMPSEAT 1 and 8. Another program, QUASAR, had data relay satellites in the same orbit, and NRO has not released the dates for JS2 to 7 so we aren’t sure which launch is which.
As a signals-collection satellite, Jumpseat was an important part of the broader signals intelligence (SIGINT) community. In simple terms, SIGINT assets are used to detect and intercept communications and other electronic emissions. Whether radios or radars, those emitters can also be geolocated and categorized, as well as listened in on.
Jumpseat was also active in two subsets of SIGINT. The first was communications intelligence (COMINT), including keeping tabs on day-to-day communications between military personnel, by eavesdropping on electronic signals. Secondly, Jumpseat gathered foreign instrumentation signals intelligence (FISINT), which involves intercepting and analyzing electromagnetic emissions from foreign weapon systems, such as missile telemetry, radar, and tracking signals. Particular military emitters of interest to Jumpseat likely included air defenses and command and control nodes, with the data gathered being used to help build an electronic order of battle of an adversary nation, specifically the Soviet Union.
NRO
Jumpseat collections “were initially against other adversarial countries’ weapon systems capabilities,” the document states, without providing more details.
Previously classified imagery of Jumpseat has also been released, with the NRO providing a mix of diagrams, artwork, and photos of models and test specimens.
As far as is known, the Jumpseat satellites were built by Hughes, using a spin-stabilized bus, similar to that used in the TACSAT and the Intelsat-4 communications satellites. Key features of Jumpseat included a large, partially foldable dish antenna for data collection, as well as a smaller dish antenna to send data back to the ground.
Diagram showing Jumpseat components. NRO
What is interesting is that the main reflector of the JUMPSAT SIGINT antenna seems to have deployable parts…
Comparing the model vs the EMC chamber vs the shaker setup, the EMC chamber pic clearly has the reflector in a “deployed” state, vs folded for the shaker pic… https://t.co/k0oEiVZ0BEpic.twitter.com/36oo35yu3u
“The historical significance of Jumpseat cannot be understated,” said Dr. James Outzen, NRO director of the Center for the Study of National Reconnaissance, in a statement from the office. “Its orbit provided the United States a new vantage point for the collection of unique and critical signals intelligence from space.”
Jumpseat came as a follow-on to earlier electronic surveillance satellites, including Grab, Poppy, and Parcae.
These had begun to be fielded as the deepening Cold War heralded the possibility of a future weapons threat from space. This is something that was hammered home by the Soviet Union’s successful launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite, which would soon be followed by the first generation of ICBMs based on the same rocket technology.
One of two Jumpseat models that have been declassified. NROThe second Jumpseat model. NRO
“Following the end of World War II, threats of globally spreading communism and nuclear weapons proliferation fueled Americans’ anxiety of the unknown,” the NRO explains. “Across the world, the United States suspected that more American adversaries were building out extensive, topline defense arsenals including long-range missiles and atomic weapons.”
“Jumpseat’s core mission focus was to monitor adversarial offensive and defensive weapon system development,” the NRO states. “From its further orbital position, it aimed to collect data that might offer unique insight into existing and emerging threats.”
Jumpseat testing in an anechoic chamber. NRO
Jumpseat operated in a transponder mode, sending downlinked data to the NRO for initial processing. Once processed, the data was provided to the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, and other national security elements.
While the NRO’s first electronic surveillance satellites — like Grab, Poppy, and Parcae — operated in low-earth orbit, Program A was tasked with developing a satellite for signals collection from a highly elliptical orbit. This was known as Project Earpop.
A factory view of Jumpseat. NRO
Jumpseat emerged from Earpop as “the United States’ first-generation, highly elliptical orbit (HEO) signals-collection satellite.” HEO refers to an elongated, egg-shaped trajectory, which is especially relevant for a spy satellite. In this way, the satellite has significant ‘dwell time’ at two points of its orbit, as it ascends and descends to its apogee.
In Jumpseat’s case, HEO kept the satellite for longer periods at high altitude over the northern polar regions: ideal for keeping watch on the Soviet Union. HEO above the northern polar regions is sometimes known as a Molniya orbit, after a series of Soviet satellites that operated here.
HEO, in this instance, should not be confused with a high-Earth orbit (HEO), one that takes a spacecraft beyond the geostationary orbital belt, which is defined as being around 22,236 miles above sea level.
Unconfirmed reports suggest that one of the key missions of Jumpseat was to monitor Soviet ballistic missile warning radars in the far north of the country. That would certainly make sense based on orbits, although there were plenty of other military emitters of great interest to the United States and its allies in this region.
FMI visualisation of HEO satellites monitoring the Arctic
The Jumpseat declassification memorandum notes that the satellites “performed admirably” and were only removed from the NRO’s SIGINT architecture as late as 2006.
The NRO says that the partial declassification of Jumpseat now is justified since these “will not cause harm to our current and future satellite systems.” The office also notes that it wants to bring attention to the program for its pioneering role in HEO signals-collection satellites.
As to what kinds of capabilities have taken over from Jumpseat, most aspects of these remain as secretive as their predecessor once was.
There are various unverified reports that a series of satellites known as Trumpet have taken over from Jumpseat. There are, meanwhile, many other large, classified payloads that the NRO has launched into space and which could perform similar functions
Meanwhile, this area of intelligence collection is increasingly being farmed out to commercial enterprises.
As the NRO states, “overhead collection of signals is no longer a government-only endeavor as several unclassified commercial ventures have launched signal collection systems whose capabilities are comparable if not superior to Jumpseat.”
As we have discussed in the past, the commercial space sector has opened up the possibility of constellations featuring potentially hundreds of intelligence-gathering satellites, and it will herald another revolution in both tactical and strategic space-based sensing. Starlink-like constellations, but used for sensing — which the United States is already pursuing — would be able to provide persistent surveillance of the entire globe at any given time. This would allow for continuous surveillance of any spot on the planet, not just snapshots in time taken during orbital flyovers by individual satellites. It is by no means clear what types of electronic intelligence collection can be done by such a constellation due to the small individual antenna sizes on each satellite, but if those limitations can be overcome, it could change how and when the U.S. monitors the electronic emissions of its adversaries.
Watch SpaceX deploy Starlink satellites into space
Regardless, having more satellites available and having ways to rapidly deploy new systems into orbit are increasingly urgent priorities, considering the stated level of threat posed to them by Russia and, increasingly, China.
Whatever is out there, or is set to be out there in the future, it will be indebted to the trailblazing work done by the secretive Jumpseat program.
Venezuela is looking to access $4.9 billion in IMF-issued special drawing rights. (Xinhua)
Caracas, January 28, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – International creditors have shown growing optimism to collect on defaulted Venezuelan debt in the wake of the January 3 US military strikes and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro.
According to Bloomberg, the volume of Venezuelan bonds traded increased tenfold since the start of the year. Securities have rallied to around 40 cents on the dollar, having hit lows of 1.5 cents on the dollar in the past.
A combination of defaulted bonds, unpaid loans and arbitration awards is estimated to total up to US $170 billion after years of accruing interest. The Maduro government began defaulting on debt service in 2017 as US sanctions crippled the Caribbean nation’s economy and ultimately blocked financial transactions altogether.
The Venezuelan Creditor Committee (VCC) expressed “readiness” to discuss a debt restructuring deal when authorized. The group brings together creditors including GMO, Greylock Capital, Mangart Capital, and Morgan Stanley, which hold over $10 billion in sovereign and state oil company PDVSA bonds.
Elias Ferrer Breda, financial analyst and director of Orinoco Research, told Venezuelanalysis that the “enthusiasm” means creditors feel a debt restructuring deal is “closer,” but warned that any agreement will hinge on US recognition of the Venezuelan government.
“The recognition, along with the lifting of primary sanctions, is the final obstacle,” he said. “There have been steps to reopen the US embassy in Caracas and a Venezuelan delegation headed by Félix Plasencia also visited DC.”
The first Trump administration recognized the self-proclaimed “interim government” led by Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate authority in 2019, prompting Caracas to break diplomatic relations. After the parallel Guaidó administration dissolved in 2022, Washington transferred the recognition to the opposition-majority National Assembly whose term expired in 2021.
The small group of US-backed politicians retains control over Venezuelan-owned assets in the US. For its part, the Venezuelan government headed by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez has advocated a renewed diplomatic engagement with Washington. The two administrations have taken steps to reopen the respective embassies.
Ferrer, who also directs the Guacamaya media outlet, suggested that the State Department has no immediate plans to change its formal recognition of the defunct parliament.
“However, there is a de facto recognition of the Rodríguez acting government being built,” he went on to add. “This will become de jure sooner or later; it could be a few months or even a couple of years.”
Venezuela’s inability to sustain debt service, including settlements with creditors, as a result of sanctions, saw many corporations pursue legal avenues to collect. Crystallex, ConocoPhillips and several other companies are set to benefit from the proceeds of the forced judicial auction of Venezuela’s US-based refiner CITGO.
Washington’s formal recognition of the Rodríguez acting administration could also pave the way for Venezuela to access about $4.9 billion in “special drawing rights” issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF created the liquidity instruments in 2021 to help governments deal with the Covid-19 pandemic but blocked Venezuela from accessing its share as it followed Trump’s lead in not recognizing the Nicolás Maduro government.
According to reports, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently held meetings with the heads of the IMF and the World Bank to discuss a possible re-engagement with the South American country.
For their part, Venezuelan authorities have expressed a willingness to engage with creditors in the past, but US sanctions preempted any meaningful engagement.
Caracas’ debt also includes long-term oil-for-loan agreements with China. However, with Washington’s naval blockade recently blocking China-bound crude shipments, Beijing has reportedly sought assurances of the repayment of debts estimated at $10-20 billion.
Rubio insisted that Caracas needs to have its expenses approved by Washington. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)
Caracas, January 29, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the Trump administration’s January 3 attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro during a Senate hearing on Wednesday.
“[Having Maduro in power] was an enormous strategic risk for the United States,“ Rubio said in his testimony to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. “It was an untenable situation, and it had to be addressed.”
The Trump official claimed that the military operation aimed to “aid law enforcement” and did not constitute an act of war. He likewise emphasized the White House’s concern about Venezuela allegedly being a “base of operations” for US geopolitical rivals Iran, Russia, and China.
Rubio faced criticism from multiple senators, with Rand Paul arguing that the White House would consider a similar attack directed against the US as an act of war. Despite widespread criticism from Democrats and a handful of Republicans, efforts to pass War Powers resolutions have been narrowly defeated in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores pleaded not guilty to charges including drug trafficking conspiracy in a New York federal court on January 5. US officials have never presented evidence tying high-ranking Venezuelan leaders to narcotics activities, and specialized agencies have consistently found the Caribbean nation to play a marginal role in global drug trafficking.
The Venezuelan government, led by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, has repeatedly denounced the US attack and demanded the release of Maduro and Flores. At the same time, Rodríguez and other officials have advocated for renewed diplomatic engagement to settle “differences” with Washington.
The January 3 strikes, which killed 100 people, have drawn widespread condemnation in Latin America and beyond. A recent Progressive International summit in Colombia called for a joint regional response against US aggression.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Rubio reiterated the US government’s plans to control the Venezuelan oil sector and impose conditions on the acting Rodríguez administration. He added that the White House is seeking stability in the South American country ahead of a “democratic transition.”
Rubio additionally confirmed that Washington is administering Venezuelan oil sales, with proceeds deposited in US-controlled bank accounts in Qatar before a portion is rerouted to Caracas. He added that at some point the funds will run through Treasury Department accounts in the United States.
Democratic senators questioned the legality and transparency of the present arrangement. The Secretary of State further claimed that Caracas would need to submit a “budget request” before accessing its funds.
The initial deal reportedly comprised some 50 million barrels of oil, worth around $2 billion, that had accumulated due to a US naval blockade of Venezuelan exports. After a reported $300 million were turned over to Venezuelan private banks last week, the Venezuelan Central Bank announced that a further $200 million will be made available in early February.
Venezuelan banks are offering the foreign currency in auction to customers, with officials vowing priority for imports in the food and healthcare sectors.
According to Reuters, the US Treasury Department is preparing a general license to allow select corporations to engage in oil dealings with Caracas. Since 2017, the Venezuelan oil industry has been under wide-reaching unilateral coercive measures, including financial sanctions, an export embargo, and secondary sanctions.
In his address, Rubio went on to state that Venezuelan authorities “deserve credit for eradicating Chávez-era restrictions on private investment” in the oil industry, in reference to a recent overhaul of the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbons preliminarily approved last week. He added that a portion of oil revenues will be used for imports from US manufacturers.
On Tuesday, Acting President Rodríguez announced during a televised broadcast that Venezuela was importing medical equipment from the US using “unblocked funds.”
The Venezuelan leader emphasized the importance of relations based on mutual respect with the US and rejected claims that her government is subject to dictates from foreign actors. She affirmed that there are open “communication channels” with the Trump administration and collaboration with Rubio on a “working agenda.”
The acting authorities in Caracas have sought to promote a significant rebound of crude production by offering expanded benefits to private investors as part of the reform bill. Expected to be finally approved in the coming weeks, the new law abrogates provisions introduced under former President Hugo Chávez to ensure majority state control over the oil sector in favor of flexible arrangements granting substantial autonomy to corporate partners.
With the final Israeli captive returned, Palestinians are waiting to see if Israel will now implement a true ceasefire.
The remains of the final Israeli captive have been returned from Gaza. For months, the Israeli government has cited the remaining bodies of captives as a reason for limiting crossings, delaying aid deliveries and slowing the implementation of the agreed ceasefire. With this justification now gone, what will change for Palestinians in Gaza?
In this episode:
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Sarí el-Khalili and Melanie Marich, with Tamara Khandaker, Tuleen Barakat, and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Alexandra Locke.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhemm. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
French lawyers for suspected ISIL members transferred from Syria say the men are suffering inhumane treatment in Iraqi jails.
Published On 29 Jan 202629 Jan 2026
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Lawyers for a group of French nationals accused of being part of ISIL (ISIS) and transferred by the United States from Syria to prisons in Iraq say the inmates have been subjected to “torture and inhumane treatment” there.
French media reported on Wednesday that lawyers Marie Dose and Matthieu Bagard visited the accused men in Baghdad during a recent visit and said their clients had been subjected to ill-treatment in detention in Iraq.
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The abuse – including being slapped, strangled, handcuffed behind their backs “with a pulley system” and threatened with rape with iron bars – was inflicted to “make them confess to their presence in Iraq” during their alleged time in ISIL, which would give the Iraqi justice system jurisdiction to try them for their alleged crimes, the lawyers said.
The lawyers were quoted as saying the accused ISIL members “assured us that they had not been in Iraq before their arrest in Syria and their transfer to Baghdad”.
Deaths in Syrian custody
During their two-day visit, which began on Sunday, the lawyers, acting on behalf of the families of the prisoners, said they met 13 of the 47 French nationals alleged to be ISIL members who are being held in Iraq.
The 13 men said they were arrested from 2017 to March 23, 2019, the day ISIL lost control of Baghouz, Syria, ending its final hold on territory.
They said they were imprisoned in a jail in northeastern Syria under challenging conditions, in which four French inmates died due to illness and “severe deficiencies”, and they were interrogated on numerous occasions by the FBI, CIA and other agencies believed to represent France and the European Union.
US military transfers
The lawyers made the comments amid the transfer of large numbers of ISIL detainees from prisons and detention camps in Syria to Iraq on US military flights.
The wave of transfers was being carried out after a recent advance by Syrian government forces in the northeast against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which the US trained and supported to fight ISIL. The SDF has controlled camps and prisons holding suspected ISIL members for years.
The escape of ISIL detainees during the fighting in cities like al-Shaddadi sparked concerns that they could regroup and pose a renewed security threat, prompting an arrangement for the US military to run flights transferring the prisoners to Iraqi jails.
The Associated Press news agency reported on Sunday that 275 prisoners had been transferred so far while the Anadolu Agency reported that thousands were planned to be transferred under the agreement.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on Sunday said the transfer of the ISIL detainees was “temporary” and urged countries to repatriate their nationals.
In a separate statement on Sunday, Iraq’s highest judicial body said it would prosecute the transferred detainees after a meeting of top security and political officials.
The US has intensified threats against Iran if it doesn’t agree to its demands, as Trump says a ‘massive armada’ is amassing in the region. Al Jazeera’s Virginia Pietromarchi answers key questions on the latest escalation.
Top official vows shift in operations after killings of US citizens, but says Trump not ‘surrendering’ mission.
Published On 29 Jan 202629 Jan 2026
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Tom Homan, United State President Donald Trump’s Border Czar, has vowed a shift in immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota, but maintained that Trump was not “surrendering” his mission.
Speaking during a news conference from the Midwestern state, where he was sent in the wake of two killings of US citizens by immigration enforcement officers this month, Homan vowed a lasting presence and more refined enforcement operations.
Still, he largely placed the blame of recent escalations on the administration offormer US President Joe Biden and the policies of local officials, saying that more cooperation would lead to less outrage.
“I’m staying until the problem’s gone,” Homan told reporters on Thursday, adding the Trump administration had promised and will continue to target individuals that constitute “public safety threats and national security threats”.
“We will conduct targeted enforcement operations. Targeted what we’ve done for decades,” Homan said. “When we hit the streets, we know exactly who we’re looking for.”
While Homan portrayed the approach as business as usual, immigration observers have said the administration has increasingly used dragnet strategies in an effort to meet sky-high detention quotas.
State and local law enforcement officials last week even detailed many of their off-duty officers had been randomly stopped and asked for their papers. They noted that all those stopped were people of colour.
On the campaign trail, Trump had vowed to target only “criminals”, but shortly after taking office, White House spokesperson said it considered anyone in the country without documentation to have committed a crime.
Homan vowed to continue meeting with local and state officials, hailing early “progress” even as differences remain. He highlighted a meeting with the State Attorney General Keith Ellison in which he “clarified for me that county jails may notify ICE of the release dates of criminal public safety risk so ICE can take custody”.
It remained unclear if the announcement represented a policy change. Minnesota has no explicit state laws preventing authorities from cooperating with ICE and the states prisons have a long track-record of coordinating with immigration officials on individuals convicted of crimes.
County jails typically coordinate based on their own discretion.
Homan was sent by Trump to replace Greg Bovino, the top border patrol official sent to the state as part of a massive enforcement operation that has sparked widespread protests.
On January 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Last week, border patrol agents fatally shot Alex Pretti.
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
As U.S. President Donald Trump is again touting a “massive armada” of ships heading to the Middle East amid growing tensions with Iran, more assets continue to pour into the region, including an electronic intelligence collection plane, which would be critical to addressing a range on contingencies, and another destroyer. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the Senate that U.S. forces are needed in case of a potential attack from Iran and that the administration does not know what will happen next if the government of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei falls.
You can catch up with our most recent coverage of events in the Middle East here.
“A massive Armada is heading to Iran,” Trump stated Wednesday morning in a post on his Truth Social platform, referring to the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group (CSG). “It is moving quickly, with great power, enthusiasm, and purpose. It is a larger fleet, headed by the great Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln, than that sent to Venezuela. Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.”
It remains unclear what Trump meant by a larger fleet. A Navy spokesman confirmed to us Wednesday morning that the Lincoln and three Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer escorts are now in the CENTCOM region. That’s the same number of ships the Gerald R. Ford CSG deployed with to the Caribbean ahead of the Maduro capture.
All told, the Navy now has 10 warships in the CENTCOM area of responsibility (AOR). The Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black just joined that force, a Navy official told us.
A destroyer would provide picket defense against missiles and drones, as well as standoff call strike capabilities. This is something especially important in that part of the Middle East right now since the Houthi rebels of Yemen have threatened to attack U.S. and Israeli targets should Iran come under fire.
By comparison, there are 12 warships in the Caribbean, the official explained. That force, along with a number of destroyers and carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, includes the Iwo Jima Amphibious Readiness Group (ARG)/22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) made up of three amphibious assault vessels, and a Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser. In addition, the Ocean Trader, a special operations mothership, was also plying those waters. It’s also worth noting that CSGs deploy with at least one fast attack submarine that isn’t usually disclosed.
When we asked for more details about Trump’s claim, the White House referred us to the Truth Social post, and CENTCOM referred us to the White House.
The Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black joined a growing force of Navy warships in the U.S. Central Command region yesterday. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jacob Mattingly) Petty Officer 2nd Class Jacob Mattingly
While the Navy’s deployments are getting a lot of attention, a U.S. Air Force RC-135V Rivet Joint electronic surveillance plane has flown to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, according to online flight trackers. The aircraft, callsign Olive48, arrived at Al Udeid on Wednesday morning Eastern time, according to FlightRadar24.
The U.S. Air Force RC-135V Rivet Joint is now landing at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
I expect both the E-11A BACN and HC-130J Combat King II to leave Chania for Al Udeid later today.
The Rivet Joint departed from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska and stopped at RAF Mildenhall before arriving at Al Udeid.
The RC-135 is one of America’s most capable intelligence-gathering assets. Each airliner-sized jet contains a large array of signals intelligence (SIGINT) systems that detect and intercept communications and other electronic emissions. The aircraft can also geolocate and categorize the emitters sending out those signals, from radios to radars. The RC-135s are often used to build a electronic order of battle of an adversary nation, locating their air defenses and command and control nodes, as well as intercepting communications as to how they respond to various stimuli or just during mundane operations. This information is critical to building an effective war plan and it needs to be updated just prior to launching an operation. It is also very important for defensive monitoring and understanding an enemy’s intentions and the status of its military at any given time.
Rivet Joint deployments happen around the globe regularly, including to the Middle East. In November, a U.S. official confirmed to us that one of these jets had been deployed to the U.S. Southern Command region “testing Venezuelan sensors and responses, and it is part of the pressure campaign to show U.S. capabilities in the Caribbean.” This matched our prior analysis as to their presence there. The information gathered would have played a key role in the effective capture of Maduro.
We’ve reached out to CENTCOM and the 55th Wing at Offutt, which operates the Rivet Joints, for comment.
An RC-135V/W Rivet Joint. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. William Rio Rosado) (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. William Rio Rosado)
There are also indications that other unique airborne capabilities may be headed to the Middle East.
Flight trackers are showing that an E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node (BACN) jet is heading to Souda Air Base in Crete, a common route for deployments to the Middle East. While we have no confirmation of where this jet might go next, a move to the Middle East ahead of a potential conflict makes sense. E-11As are highly specialized communications gateway nodes designed to create an ‘active net’ over the battlespace and quickly transfer data sent using a variety of distinct waveforms between different aerial platforms and forces on the ground/surface. With these capabilities, the aircraft can also serve as valuable communications relay nodes. You can find out more about BACN and its history in this past War Zone feature. It’s also worth mentioning the BACNs spent many years exclusively deployed to the Middle East during the Global War on Terror.
🇺🇸 Strategic Signal
A U.S. Air Force E 11A BACN aircraft, callsign BLKWF01, was tracked over the western Mediterranean after crossing the Atlantic, reportedly heading toward Souda Air Base in Crete.
In addition, it appears six U.S. Navy E/A-18G Growlers electronic warfare jets have departed from their assignment to the Caribbean and are headed east across the Atlantic, potentially for deployment to the Middle East. Again we have no confirmation of why the jets are making this flight.
The EA-18Gs in the Middle East would be critical force multipliers. Such a deployment could be indicative of what one would see in the lead-up to a kinetic operation centered heavily on strikes on targets in inland areas, such as ones the U.S. and possibly Israel might carry out in Iran in the future. Growlers can provide electronic warfare support for standoff munitions and/or aircraft penetrating into enemy air defenses, among other battlefield effects.
#USAF United States Air Force – Middle East Activity (CORONET) 27 January 2026 – 2000z
Second update for the day. The main focus being CORONET East 037 involving E/A-18G’s, as well as HC-130’s and additional C-17 flights.
There are also signs that HC-130J Combat King II combat search and rescue (CSAR) planes are moving toward the Middle East, another indication that Trump could be considering airstrikes inside Iran. The aircraft would be needed for rapid rescues of any aircrews that are lost during military operations, specifically over contested territory. They can also support special operations aircraft with aerial refueling for non personnel recovery missions.
#USAF United States Air Force – Middle East Activity (CORONET) 27 January 2026 – 2000z
Second update for the day. The main focus being CORONET East 037 involving E/A-18G’s, as well as HC-130’s and additional C-17 flights.
As we have previously reported, at least a dozen additional F-15E Strike Eagle fighters were recently deployed to Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. Aerial refueling tankers have also trickled into the Middle East. Other tactical jets remain in the region, including A-10s. But despite the potential presence of the Growlers and the movements of the F-15Es, there has still been no mass influx of USAF tactical airpower into the Middle East. This is something we would likely see if the U.S. intends to execute a sustained campaign, even if limited in scope, against Iran. This points to a more limited operation, unless Israel steps in to provide its tactical fighter force in a joint operation. It’s also very possible that these assets will deploy in the coming days.
#USAF United States Air Force – Middle East Activity 26 January 2026 – 1045z
Traffic is primarily focused on bases housing air defence systems like THAAD from Fort Hood. As the weather conditions don’t appear to have improved, the level of traffic is still fairly low. I’ve… https://t.co/INuCDdgv5spic.twitter.com/PQ9fchMiMf
Amid the U.S. buildup, Rubio offered some insights about why this is happening.
“On the issue of our presence in the region, here’s the baseline I want to set for everybody,” Rubio said during his testimony to the Senate in a hearing on the situation in Venezuela. “The baseline is this: we have 30,000 to 40,000 American troops stationed across eight or nine facilities in that region. All are within the reach…of an array of thousands of Iranian one-way UAVs and Iranian short-range ballistic missiles that threaten our troop presence.”
“We have to have enough force and power in the region just on a baseline to defend against the possibility that at some point, as a result of something, the Iranian regime decides to strike at our troop presence in the region,” he added. “The president always reserves the preemptive defensive option. In essence, if we have indications that, in fact, they’re going to attack our troops in the region, to defend our personnel in the region.”
In addition, Rubio noted that “we also have security agreements, the defense of Israel plan, and others that require a force posture in the region to defend against that. And so I think it’s wise and prudent to have a force posture within the region that could respond and potentially, not necessarily what’s going to happen, but if necessary, preemptively, prevent the attack against thousands of American servicemen and other facilities in the region and our allies.”
Rubio says US forces are amassing in the region to potentially “preemptively prevent” Iran from attacking US forces already in the region. Pristine logic. Especially after Trump just announced he’s sending a “Massive Armada,” and threatened a “far worse” attack than last June pic.twitter.com/dbHMXuUhC9
The U.S. Secretary of State also noted that at least thousands of protesters have been killed by government forces during the unrest that began in Iran on Dec. 28. The uprising occurred due to rising prices and devalued currency that saw the rial crater now to basically nothing, as well as a devastating drought, and ongoing harsh treatment from the regime.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “thousands” have died in the Iran protests “for certain,” but couldn’t confirm the numbers.
“The protests may have ebbed, but they will spark up again in the future because this regime, unless they are willing to change and or leave, have no… pic.twitter.com/Tq7RIPm8WA
“That’s an open question,” Rubio responded to a question about who would lead Iran next. “No one knows what would take over. Obviously, their system is divided between the supreme leader and the IRGC that responds directly to him. And then you’ve got these quasi-elected individuals, the ones that wear the suits on television, who are part of their political branches, but ultimately have to run everything they do by the Supreme Leader. So I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer as to what happens next in Iran if the Supreme Leader and the regime were to fall.”
In his Trump Social post on Wednesday, the president issued one of his most serious threats against Iran to date. The American leader, who began his recent round of warnings to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the wake of the regime’s deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters, is also pressuring Iran to end its nuclear weapons program.
“Hopefully Iran will quickly “Come to the Table” and negotiate a fair and equitable deal – NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS – one that is good for all parties,” Trump proclaimed. “Time is running out, it is truly of the essence! As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t, and there was “Operation Midnight Hammer,” a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again…”
The American president gave no specifics about the deal he was demanding, “but U.S. and European officials say that in talks, they have put three demands in front of the Iranians: a permanent end to all enrichment of uranium, limits on the range and number of their ballistic missiles, and an end to all support for proxy groups in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis operating in Yemen,” The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
“Notably absent from those demands — and from Mr. Trump’s post on Truth Social on Wednesday morning — was any reference to protecting the protesters who took to the streets in Iran in December, convulsing the country and creating the latest crisis for its government. Mr. Trump had promised, in past social media posts, to come to their aid, but has barely mentioned them in recent weeks.”
According to U.S. and European officials involved in the ongoing negotiations who spoke to the New York Times, three demands have been given to the Iranians to prevent potential military actions by the United States, these include:
Iran, for its part, said there are no direct negotiations underway.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said he had not been in contact with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in recent days or requested negotiations, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing Iranian media.
“There was no contact between me and Witkoff in recent days and no request for negotiations was made from us,” Araqchi told state media, adding that various intermediaries were “holding consultations” and “were in contact with Tehran.”
“Our stance is clear, ” he added. “Negotiations don’t go along with threats and talks can only take place when there are no longer menaces and excessive demands.”
“Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein says Iran has announced its readiness for dialogue with the United States, but it has yet to receive any response from Washington,” according to IRNA. “Speaking with Rudaw, a Kurdish digital news network based in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, the foreign minister said late on Tuesday that messages are exchanged between Iran and the US, but no meeting has been held yet.”
“The main problem is that there is no direct communication,” Hussein said, adding that messages are exchanged without holding a meeting, which complicates the situation. “If a decision is made to hold a meeting, Iraq would be able to play a role, but the U.S. has yet to decide if it would hold discussions.”
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein (Iranian media)
Wary Israeli officials, who are preparing for an attack on or from Iran, are closely monitoring these unofficial talks, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“Israel is assessing reports that the United States and Iran are holding discreet contacts and that Washington has presented preconditions for possible negotiations on a new nuclear agreement,” the Post reported. “Israeli officials have expressed concern over the possibility of an agreement they view as unfavorable.”
Likely to participate in any strike against Iran, Israel was once again the target of Tehran’s wrath.
Ali Shamkhani, an advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, threatened strikes on Israel if the U.S .attacks Iran.
“The limited strike is an illusion,” he said, according to Israel National News. “Any military action by America, from any source and at any level, will be considered the beginning of war, and the response to it will be immediate, comprehensive, and unprecedented, targeting the aggressor, the heart of Tel Aviv, and everyone who supports the aggressor.”
IRAN THREATENS ISRAEL: Khamenei adviser says US military action will trigger Iranian attack on Tel Aviv (Ynet)
Should a conflict between the U.S. and Iran break out, two key regional allies have said they won’t be involved. Saudi Arabia on Tuesday said it would not allow the U.S. to use its facilities or airspace to attack Iran. That follows a similar statement made by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
🇸🇦📞🇮🇷 | HRH Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman spoke by phone with the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian. pic.twitter.com/sjcDjoHYCv
These public statements could be strictly aimed at internal audiences that might not favor involvement in an attack on another Muslim nation, especially involving Israel. They could also be to deter Iran from barraging their territory in retaliation to an attack. However, if Saudi Arabia and the UAE are serious about their reticence, it would affect U.S. basing in those countries, limiting Trump’s options to attack Iran. There are other bases in the region, like Al Udeid in Qatar, Muwaffaq Salti in Jordan, and Naval Support Activity (NSA) Bahrain, among others. Still, any reduction in facilities to store and launch aircraft makes any strike more challenging and potentially increases the risk to host countries from Iranian missiles and drones. Taking airspace over Saudi Arabia and the UAE out of the picture also reduces the vectors from which the U.S. can launch attacks from the Gulf region, limiting them to a narrower set of funnels. This is also why the carrier strike group is so important.
Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. (Google Earth)
Meanwhile, NATO ally Turkey urged Trump not to attack Iran.
“It’s wrong to attack on Iran, it’s wrong to start the war again. Iran is ready to negotiate on nuclear file again,” said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.”My advice to the American friends: close the files one by one with Iranians. Start with nuclear, close it, and not get it as a package. If you put them as a package, it will be very difficult for our Iranian friends to digest and to go through this. It might seem humiliating for them and difficult to explain to the leadership. If we can make things better tolerated, it would help.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan:
It’s wrong to attack on Iran, it’s wrong to start the war again. Iran is ready to negotiate on nuclear file again.
My advice to the American friends: close the files one by one with Iranians. Start with nuclear, close it, and not get it as… pic.twitter.com/TtGDV9l9uQ
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, on the other hand, said the Iranian regime’s days are numbered.
German Chancellor Merz says Iranian regime’s “days are numbered” – “It may be weeks, but this regime has no legitimacy whatsoever to govern the country” pic.twitter.com/sK4M4us73R
Despite the Iranian regime’s crackdown, the protests appear to be ongoing. A new video emerged showing a large demonstration in Tehran, calling for the end of the regime.
BREAKING: Massive protests erupt in Tehran, over 100,000 Iranians flooding the streets, demanding the fall of the Islamic Republic. pic.twitter.com/I8Z60fNab6
As the pressure mounts against Khamenei, a video emerged purporting to show an inside view of his compound, something observers say they’ve never seen before.
This is really something: this new video purportedly shows some of the security protocols leading to the Office of #Iran’s regime’s Supreme Leader. It’s an unprecedented video—never before have I seen something like this surface. A sign of the times. pic.twitter.com/PLSdYGDjw1
So far, there are just harsh words being exchanged in the Middle East, not munitions. However, the warning lights are blinking hot that a conflict could soon break out, something we will continue to monitor closely.
Update: 9:46 PM Eastern –
Trump is now considering options that “include U.S. military airstrikes aimed at Iran’s leaders and the security officials believed to be responsible for the killings, as well as strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and government institutions,” CNN reported, citing sources. “Trump has not made a final decision on how to proceed, sources said, but he believes his military options have been expanded from earlier this month now that a US carrier strike group is in the region.”
“Options he is now considering include US military airstrikes aimed at Iran’s leaders and the security officials…as well as strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and government institutions.”
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
The future USS John F. Kennedy, the second Ford class aircraft carrier for the U.S. Navy, has begun its initial sea trials. The Navy is slated to take delivery of the ship in 2027 after years of delays.
Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) announced that Kennedy, also known by the hull number CVN-79, had left port in Newport News, Virginia, earlier today to start initial sea trials.
“These trials will test important ship systems and components at sea for the first time,” HII wrote in posts on social media. “This huge milestone is the result of the selfless teamwork and unwavering commitment by our incredible shipbuilders, suppliers and ship’s force crew. We wish them a safe and successful time at sea!”
The future USS John F. Kennedy seen leaving Newport News, Virginia, earlier today. HII
The extent to which Kennedy has been fitted out is unclear, but the carrier is set to be delivered with some notable differences from the first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). This most notably includes an AN/SPY-6(V)3 radar, also known as the fixed-face version of Raytheon’s Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR), in place of Ford‘s Dual Band Radar (DBR). The DBR has proven immensely troublesome over the years, as you can read more about here. Pictures that HII released today show a number of differences between Kennedy‘s island and the one on Ford, due at least in part to the radar change.
A side-by-side comparison for the islands on the future USS John F. Kennedy, at left, and the USS Gerald R. Ford, at right. HII/USNA graphic showing elements of the AN/SPY-6(V)3 radar installation for the Ford class. Raytheon
Ford has suffered from a laundry list of other issues over the years, and HII and the Navy have working to leverage those lessons learned in work on all of the future ships in the class.
The Navy ordered the new Kennedy in 2013, and it was laid down at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding division in 2015. The ship was launched four years later, at which time the goal was for it to be delivered in 2022. The Navy had originally pursued a dual-phase delivery schedule for the carrier, in which it would arrive initially still lacking certain capabilities. A Congressional demand for the carrier to be able to support F-35C Joint Strike Fighters at the time of delivery contributed to an initial slip in that schedule to 2024. At the time of writing, Ford has yet to set sail on an operational cruise with F-35Cs aboard.
The Navy subsequently shifted the timetable for Kennedy again from 2024 to 2025, ostensibly to complete work that normally would be done during a Post Shakedown Availability (PSA) after delivery. Last year, the service revealed that it pushed the delivery schedule further to the right, to March 2027. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, separately reported that the Navy might not have the carrier in hand until July 2027.
Another picture of the future USS John F. Kennedy taken today. HII
“The CVN 79 delivery date shifted from July 2025 to March 2027 (preliminary acceptance TBD) to support completion of Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) certification and continued Advanced Weapons Elevator (AWE) work,” according to the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget request, which it began releasing in June 2025.
“Construction challenges affected CVN 79 and CVN 80 [the future USS Enterprise] delivery schedules. Continuing delays to Advanced Weapons Elevators construction put CVN 79’s July 2025 delivery at risk, according to program officials,” GAO said in its report, which came out that same month. “They said that, while this construction improved since CVN 78, they may postpone noncritical work like painting until after delivery to avoid delay.”
Problems with the AWEs on Fordbecame a particular cause celebre during President Donald Trump’s first term office, but the Navy said it had effectively mitigated those issues by 2021. The AWEs are critical to the carrier’s operation, being used to move aircraft munitions and other stores between the ship’s magazines and the flight deck.
Watch the Advanced Weapons Elevators on the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford
“Program officials attributed this delay [in work on CVN 79 and CVN 80] to construction material availability and persistent shipyard workforce issues that the program is working to mitigate with revised schedules and worker incentives,” GAO’s June 2025 report also noted. “The program reported it has not assessed the carrier industrial base for potential manufacturing risks but officials said that they plan to leverage other industrial base initiatives. This includes those related to submarines and within the Navy’s new Maritime Industrial Base program office.”
It’s not immediately clear how much all of this has added to Kennedy‘s price tag. Back in 2018, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) pegged Kennedy‘s cost at around $11.3 billion. A new CRS report published in December 2025 said the ship’s estimated acquisition cost had grown to $13.196 billion, citing Navy budget documents, but it is unclear if that accounts in any way for inflation. The Navy continues to estimate that future ships in the Ford class will cost even more, with CVN-81, the future USS Doris Miller, still expected to come in at around $15 billion. The Navy expects to acquire six more Ford class carriers, two of which have already been given names, the future USS William J. Clinton (CVN-82) and USS George W. Bush (CVN-83).
Acquiring more Ford class carriers is a critical priority for the Navy, which has been looking to start retiring its aging Nimitz class carriers for years now. If the Navy decommissions the USS Nimitz this year as planned, the total size of the service’s carrier force will drop to 10 hulls until Kennedy arrives. There is a standing legal requirement for the Navy to have no less than 12 carriers in service, which is reflective of the high demand for these ships, especially in times of crisis.
A look at the future USS John F. Kennedy‘s bow end as it departs on its initial sea trials. HII
“I think the Ford, from its capability perspective, would be an invaluable option for any military thing the president wants to do,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told TWZ and other outlets on the sidelines of the Surface Navy Association’s (SNA) annual symposium. “But if it requires an extension, it’s going to get some pushback from the CNO. And I will see if there is something else I can do.”
“To the financial and readiness aspects, we have maintenance agreements and contracts that have been made with yards that are going to repair the ships that are in that strike group, including the carrier itself,” Caudle noted. “And so when those are tied to a specific time, the yard is expecting it to be there. All that is highly disruptive.”
As an aside, CVN-79 is expected to be the first Ford class carrier homeported on the West Coast. Ford‘s homeport is Norfolk, Virginia, on the East Coast.
The Navy is now at least one step closer to taking delivery of the future USS John F. Kennedy.
French forward Kylian Mbappe questions team’s desire after damaging defeat sends Real Madrid into playoffs.
Published On 29 Jan 202629 Jan 2026
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Real Madrid striker Kylian Mbappe has said his team “deserve” to be in their current situation because they were not consistent enough for a top-eight spot as his side slipped into the Champions League playoff round.
The record 15-time European champions fell to a 4-2 defeat at Jose Mourinho’s Benfica on Wednesday, finishing ninth in the league phase table, meaning they must face their Portuguese conquerors or Bodo/Glimt in February instead of reaching the last 16 directly.
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After three wins in their previous three matches under new coach Alvaro Arbeloa, Madrid were brought back down to earth by Benfica in Lisbon.
“The problem is we aren’t consistent in our play, we have to fix that, you can’t have one day [playing well] and another not, a champion team does not do that,” Mbappe told reporters.
“We deserve to be in this situation today. Benfica were better. Now we have to play two more playoff games. It hurts to have to play those. We wanted to have the time in February to work on our game.”
Mbappe said he could not put his finger on a clear reason why Madrid played so poorly against Benfica.
“I think it’s a bit of everything. I can’t tell you it’s just a matter of attitude, because if I only say that, you’ll think we came here without any desire,” said the French superstar, who scored twice in the defeat.
“If I tell you it’s a football issue, you’ll think the team is bad. No, I think it’s a broader issue, and in the Champions League, every detail matters if you want to beat your opponent.
“It shows you that if you don’t come in with everything you need to win a Champions League match, the opponent will come and, as they say, make fools of you.”
However, Mbappe called on Madrid’s fans to support the team at the Santiago Bernabeu on Sunday against Rayo Vallecano in La Liga, rather than booing as they did earlier in January.
“Come and support the team – we had a bad game – but we are not knocked out of the Champions League, and in La Liga we’re in a good dynamic now,” pleaded Mbappe.
“If the Bernabeu is with us, we will win on Sunday.”
Two US federal agents involved in the fatal shooting of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti during an immigration raid in Minneapolis have been placed on administrative leave, as fallout from the most recent killing of a US citizen continues to cause outrage. Al Jazeera’s Manuel Rapalo explains.
China has told the UN Security Council that US ‘military adventurism’ in the Middle East will push the region into chaos, as President Donald Trump continues to threaten strikes on Iran if it does not submit to his demands.
For years, 64-year-old Ibrahim Zira lived with high blood pressure, managing the condition at Jigalambu Primary Healthcare Centre (PHC) in the Michika area of Adamawa State, northeastern Nigeria. When his condition worsened, he was referred to the Michika General Hospital, where he faced a familiar struggle: incomplete medical records and repeated tests.
“When I got there, they asked for my records, and the file I had contained very little information. I was asked questions and told to repeat tests I had already done. I had to pay again. It was painful because I don’t have a steady income,” Ibrahim complained.
In Nigeria, about 77 per cent of health spending is paid out of pocket, so each additional test adds a financial burden that many patients can barely afford. But the challenge is not only financial. Without digital medical records, patients like Ibrahim are often made to reconstruct their medical histories whenever they move between facilities, relying on memory of dates, drug names, and test results.
“Sometimes I forget dates or drug names,” he said. “When that happens, the health workers think I’m not serious. It’s stressful explaining the same sickness again and again, especially when you’re not feeling well.”
The same experience surfaced for Pwavira Akami during her first pregnancy. She began antenatal care (ANC) at Gweda Mallam PHC in her hometown of Numan but later relocated to Jimeta, Yola—more than an hour’s journey away—to stay with her sister. There, she registered for antenatal care at Damilu PHC.
The transition exposed the same fault line in the absence of digital patient records.
“They asked me many questions that were already written in my ANC card, but some pages were missing,” she recalled. As a result, Pwavira was asked to repeat basic lab tests. “I had to spend more money. It’s tiring; you keep answering the same questions about your last period, past illnesses, and tests. Sometimes you’re not even sure if you’re saying it correctly.”
In both cases, the problem was not medical knowledge or staff competence. It was the absence of a shared system that allowed patient information to follow people as they moved between facilities.
Entrance of General Hospital, Michika. Photo: Obidah Habila Albert/HumAngle.
Frontline workers show concerns
This gap, healthcare workers say, affects patients across Adamawa every day.
Mercy Dakko, a midwife at General Hospital, Michika, said she works almost every month without patient files and that internally displaced persons (IDPs) and pregnant women often arrive with incomplete or fragmented medical histories.
“It slows everything down,” she told HumAngle. “In emergencies, lack of history can be risky. You may not know past complications or drug reactions.”
Mercy recalled the case of a woman who came into labour, only for the staff to later learn that she was diagnosed with high blood pressure in a previous clinic. “We found out late, and it almost caused serious complications,” the midwife explained.
Sam Alex, another medical practitioner, agreed that due to a lack of well-documented medical history, they rely only on what the patient remembers, which is not always accurate. “Very often we repeat tests. It’s not ideal, but sometimes it’s the only safe option,” Sam said, noting that the stakes are even higher for chronic diseases. “It increases the risk of wrong medication, delayed care and poor outcomes, especially for conditions like diabetes or hypertension.”
He acknowledged that patients often bear additional burdens, spending more time and money, and some even refuse to come to the hospital because they are tired of having to repeat medical procedures.
‘Everything is paper-based’
At the root of the problem is a paper-based system that requires patients to carry physical files. Emmanuel Somotochukwu, a Nigerian pharmacist, told HumAngle that in his hospital, about one in ten patients are sent back simply because a prescription is illegible or an old lab result is missing.
Studies in Nigeria have found that illegible or incomplete prescriptions are a leading cause of medical error. In most hospitals across Adamawa, record officers are overwhelmed by paperwork. Bewo Gisilanbe, a record officer at the General Hospital in Michika, described how patient histories are stored.
“Everything is paper-based. Files are created manually and stored in cabinets,” he said, admitting that old files or files from busy clinic days could get torn, misplaced, and slow to retrieve. “Once a patient leaves, their record ends here. There’s no connection to other facilities.”
Bewo stressed that searching for a lost history wastes time and distorts continuity of care. “We don’t know what happened to a patient’s prior care after they leave,” he said. If systems were linked, he argued, everything would change. “It would reduce workload, improve accuracy, and make record tracking easier.”
A manual medical record cabinet at General Hospital, Michika. Photo: Obidah Habila Albert/HumAngle.
Why digitalised medical records matter
Experts say the solution to the flawed health system in Adamawa lies in Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). In the health sector, DPI refers to shared, secure information systems that allow “medical histories, prescriptions, insurance status, and laboratory results to move electronically between units, without requiring patients to act as messengers”.
The cornerstone of this system is a dependable digital identity. By mid-2025, Nigeria’s National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) had issued 123.5 million National Identity Numbers (NIN). These IDs, if utilised, can act as a digital passport, enabling the connection of patient records across various healthcare facilities.
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Recently, the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) and NIMC signed an MoU to establish a unified framework linking citizens’ national identity data with health insurance records. This integration is meant to streamline verification, reduce fraud, and expand access to healthcare, especially for underserved communities.
Beyond identity, DPI seems to require an interoperable health information record system. In 2024, the government launched the Nigeria Digital in Health Initiative (NDHI) to build a national health information exchange and patient registry. The goal is for health facilities to securely and seamlessly share information.
Nzadon David, a digital innovations specialist working with the African Union, and Asor Ahura, a Nigerian-based AI engineer and digital health expert, highlighted several key requirements for success in digital health systems. Nzadon emphasised that “every system needs a way to recognise each person. In Nigeria, this means using the NIN or similar IDs in health records.” Asor also stated that “clinics must agree on data formats and coding systems to ensure that one hospital’s notes can be understood at another. He stressed that privacy laws, such as Nigeria’s 2023 Data Protection Act and clear guidelines about who can access information are essential for building trust.
Across Africa, early DPI projects show what’s possible. Rwanda has an integrated e-health platform (Irembo) that links digital IDs to patient records and lab results. Kenya’s Afya Kenya initiative likewise allows a clinic in Kisumu to retrieve the same information as a clinic in Nairobi, eliminating duplicate efforts. The payoff is clear: fewer medical errors, faster diagnosis, and better continuity of care, according to the DPI Africa platform. Even India’s Aadhaar ID system now covers 1.4 billion people and is tied into programs including health insurance.
Nzadon noted that these countries didn’t digitise everything at once. They started small, created shared standards, scaling gradually. “States that succeed focus on shared standards and simple, open systems more than expensive software,” he added.
The road map
In 2025, Nigeria joined the UN’s Digital Public Goods Alliance, pledging that government systems, including health, should be open, inclusive, and interoperable. These moves seem to reflect lessons from around the world. Rwanda, Kenya and other countries show that with a national ID, electronic medical records, and a clear privacy framework, health services can become seamless. In Nigeria’s case, there is no shortage of data on why it matters. Aside from the human toll of broken care, inefficiency has economic consequences. According to McKinsey Global Institute’s digital identification report, scaling digital ID systems worldwide could add $5 trillion to global GDP.
Frontline healthcare workers, seeing the impact firsthand, have a clear wish list.
With connected records, Mercy said, “we can focus more on care instead of paperwork.” Bewo admitted that a shared system would “reduce mistakes” and free up resources for patients. Perhaps most pointedly, patients themselves feel the difference. Reflecting on his own experience, Ibrahim says a digitalised health system would make life easier.
This report is produced under the DPI Africa Journalism Fellowship Programme of the Media Foundation for West Africa and Co-Develop.
Ousted premier says the exclusion of her Awami League party “deepens resentment” on Muhammad Yunus’s interim government.
Bangladesh’s toppled leader Sheikh Hasina has denounced her country’s election next month after her party was barred from participating in the polls, raising fears of wider political division and possible unrest.
In a message published by The Associated Press news agency on Thursday, Hasina said “a government born of exclusion cannot unite a divided nation.”
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Hasina, who was sentenced to death in absentia for her crackdown on a student uprising in 2024 that killed hundreds of people and led to the fall of her 15-year government, has been sharpening her critique of the interim government of Nobel Peace winner Muhammad Yunus in recent days, as the election that will shape the nation’s next chapter looms.
“Each time political participation is denied to a significant portion of the population, it deepens resentment, delegitimises institutions and creates the conditions for future instability,” the former leader, who is living in exile in India, warned in her email to the AP.
She also claimed that the current Bangladesh government deliberately disenfranchised millions of her supporters by excluding her party – the former governing Awami League – from the election.
More than 127 million people in Bangladesh are eligible to vote in the February 12 election, widely seen as the country’s most consequential in decades and the first since Hasina’s removal from power after the mass uprising.
Yunus’s government is overseeing the process, with voters also weighing a proposed constitutional referendum on sweeping political reforms.
Campaigning started last week, with rallies in the capital, Dhaka, and elsewhere.
Yunus returned to Bangladesh and took over three days after Hasina fled to India on August 5, 2024, following weeks of violent unrest.
He has promised a free and fair election, but critics question whether the process will meet democratic standards and whether it will be genuinely inclusive after the ban on Hasina’s Awami League.
There are also concerns over security and uncertainty surrounding the referendum, which could bring about major changes to the constitution.
Yunus’s office said in a statement to the AP that security forces will ensure an orderly election and will not allow anyone to influence the outcome through coercion or violence. International observers and human rights groups have been invited to monitor the process, the statement added.
Tarique Rahman, the son of former prime minister and Hasina rival, Khaleda Zia, returned to Bangladesh after his mother’s death in December.
Rahman, the acting chairman of Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party, is a strong candidate to win the forthcoming election.
On Friday, Hasina made her first public speech since her ouster, telling a packed press club in Delhi that Bangladesh “will never experience free and fair elections” under Yunus’s watch.
Her remarks on Friday were broadcast online and streamed live to more than 100,000 of her supporters.
The statement was criticised by Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which issued a statement saying it was “surprised” and “shocked” that India had allowed her to make a public address.
Bangladesh has been asking India to extradite Hasina, but New Delhi has yet to comment on the request.
India’s past support for Hasina has frayed relations between the South Asian neighbours since her overthrow.
In Dhaka’s political chatter, one word often keeps resurfacing when people debate who really holds the reins of the country: “Kochukhet”.
The neighbourhood that houses key military installations has, in recent public discussions, become shorthand for the cantonment’s influence over civilian matters, including politics.
Bangladesh is weeks away from a national election on February 12, the first since the 2024 uprising that ended then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s long rule and ushered in an interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
The army is not vying for electoral power. But it has become central to the voting climate as the most visible guarantor of public order, with the police still weakened in morale and capacity after the upheaval of 2024, and with the country still reckoning with a “security apparatus” that watchdogs and official inquiries say was used to shape political outcomes under Hasina.
For nearly a year and a half now, soldiers have policed the streets of Bangladesh, operating under an order that grants them magisterial powers in support of law and order. On election duty, the deployment will scale up further: Officials have said as many as 100,000 troops are expected nationwide, and proposed changes to election rules would formally list the armed forces among the poll’s “law-enforcing agencies”.
Bangladesh, a nation of more than 170 million wedged between India and Myanmar, has repeatedly seen political transitions hijacked by coups, counter-coups and military rule, a past that still shapes how Bangladeshis read the present. Analysts say that the army today is not positioned for an overt takeover, but it remains a decisive power centre: an institution embedded across the state, able to narrow civilian choices through its security role, intelligence networks and footprint inside government.
Bangladesh’s Chief of Army Staff General Waker-uz-Zaman, seen here during an interview with Reuters at his office in the Bangladesh Army Headquarters, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, September 23, 2024 [Mohammad Ponir Hossain/ Reuters]
The military’s role now
Thomas Kean, the International Crisis Group’s senior consultant on Bangladesh and Myanmar, said the army has been “backstopping the interim government” not only politically but also “through day-to-day security amid police weakness”.
He said the institution is eager to see a transition to an elected government so the country returns to a firmer constitutional footing and so troops can “return to their barracks”.
“There are different factions and views within the army, but overall I would say that the army wants to see the election take place as smoothly as possible,” Kean told Al Jazeera.
Kean argued that if the army chief, General Waker-uz-Zaman, and the military “had wanted to take power, they could have done so when the political order collapsed on August 5”, the day Hasina fled to India amid a popular student-led revolt. But the military chose not to, he said, in part because it had learned from the fallout of past experiments with its direct political control.
Asif Shahan, a political analyst and professor at Dhaka University, said the military was aware that a takeover would have also jeopardised key interests, including Bangladesh’s United Nations peacekeeping deployments, which carry both financial benefits and reputational weight for the armed forces. Bangladesh has for decades been one of the biggest suppliers to UN peacekeeping missions, and receives between $100m and $500m a year in payouts and equipment reimbursements for these services.
But Shahan argues that the military remains “an important political actor”. Today, he said, its influence is “less about overt intervention than the institutional weight it carries through the security and intelligence apparatus”.
He also pointed to what he called the army’s “corporate” footprint. That footprint spans involvement in major state infrastructure projects, the military’s own business conglomerate, and the presence of serving and retired officers across commercial and state bodies.
Shahan said the last Hasina government “gave them a share of the pie”, leaving “a kind of culture of corruption … ingrained”. He suggested that this could translate into informal pressure on whoever governs next to do the same, and anxieties inside the force over whether “the facilities and privileges” it has accumulated will shrink.
On the election itself, Shahan too said that the possibility of the army trying to gain overt control was “very low” unless there is such a major law and order breakdown that there is public demand for the army to step in as the “only source of stability”,
Others who track the military closely agreed. Rajib Hossain, a former army officer and author of the best-selling book Commando, said he “strongly believes” the army will avoid partisan involvement for its own sake. “The army will play a neutral role during this election,” he said. “What we’ve observed on the ground over the past year and a half, there is no record of the army acting in a partisan way.”
But, he added, pressure on the institution has been intense since 2024. “Internally, there’s an understanding that if the army fails to act neutrally, it could lose even the public credibility it still has,” he said.
Mustafa Kamal Rusho, a retired brigadier general at the Osmani Centre for Peace and Security Studies, also told Al Jazeera that the military does not have “any clear intent” to influence politics, though “it still remains a critical power base”.
That leverage was clearest during the 2024 uprising, Rusho said, when Bangladesh’s political crisis reached a point that many Bangladeshis and international watchdogs viewed the military’s posture as decisive. “If the military did not take the stand that it took, then there would have been more bloodshed,” he said.
With protests escalating, the military refused to fully enforce Hasina’s curfew orders and decided troops would not fire on civilians. It enabled Hasina to flee to India on an air force plane, and the army chief then announced an interim government would be formed.
In an Al Jazeera documentary on the uprising last year, Waker-uz-Zaman, who is related to Hasina and was appointed less than two months before her collapse, also stressed that his forces would not turn their guns on civilians. “We don’t shoot at civilians. It’s not in our culture … So we did not intervene,” he said.
In the same interview, he added: “We believe that the military should not engage in politics … It’s not our cup of tea.”
Bangladesh’s military leader and president, Hussain Muhammad Ershad, meeting British PM Thatcher at Downing St. London on February 16, 1989 [Wendy Schwegmann/ Reuters]
When the military ruled
That hasn’t always been the military’s position.
After the 1975 assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding leader and then-president, by a group of military officers, the country entered a period marked by coups, counter-coups and military rule upheavals that reshaped the state and produced political forces that still dominate elections.
One of them was the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), founded by army general-turned-ruler Ziaur Rahman, who emerged as the country’s most powerful figure in the late 1970s before moving into civilian politics. Rahman was assassinated in 1981 in a failed coup attempt by another group of military officers. The BNP remains a key contender in the February 12 vote, now led by Rahman’s son, Tarique Rahman, who has returned to front-line politics after a long exile.
In 1982, then army chief Hussain Muhammad Ershad seized power and ruled for much of the 1980s. Writer and political historian Mohiuddin Ahmed has described Ershad’s takeover as coming only months after he publicly argued that “the army should be brought in to help run the country”.
Eventually, a pro-democracy movement led by Zia’s wife, Khaleda Zia, and Hasina, also Mujibur Rahman’s daughter, forced him from office. The BNP won a landmark election, and in 1991, Khaleda became the country’s first female prime minister.
Since then, Rusho said, the military’s influence “became more indirect”, though Bangladesh still saw an abortive May 1996 showdown when the then army chief, Lieutenant General Abu Saleh Mohammad Nasim, defied presidential orders, and troops loyal to him moved towards Dhaka. Nasim was arrested and removed from office.
A decade later, in 2007, the military in effect “fully backed” a caretaker government that was formed to replace Khaleda’s second administration, which had ruled between 2001 and 2006. That caretaker government was installed in January 2007 after a breakdown in the election process and escalating political violence. The International Crisis Group described the caretaker administration as “headed by technocrats but controlled by the military”, while then-army chief Moeen U Ahmed argued the political climate “was deteriorating very rapidly” and that the military’s intervention had “quickly ended” street violence.
It was only after 2009, when Hasina came back to power – her Awami League had first ruled between 1996 and 2001 – that the military became “subordinate to the civilian regime”, Rusho said.
Bangladeshi military force soldiers on armored vehicles patrol the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, July 20, 2024 [Rajib Dhar/ AP Photo]
Blurred lines
But even though the military today insists that it does not want power, it has often drifted into the political terrain.
A major moment arrived just weeks after Hasina’s ouster, in September 2024, when General Zaman told the Reuters news agency he would back Yunus’s interim government “come what may”, while also floating a timeline for elections within 18 months. The interview, which critics described as something unprecedented for a serving army chief, placed the military close to the country’s central political debate.
Hossain, the former army officer and author, criticised the public nature of the intervention. “If he [Zaman] had discussed this after sitting with all the stakeholders … the interim [administration], political parties, protest leaders … and then gone to the media, that would be acceptable,” he said. “But here, he declared it unilaterally and blindsided the government from his position of power. He had no authority to do that.”
“You may say this is an extraordinary, transitional time and the military has a role to play,” Hossain added. “But then, why do we have an administration at all?”
Shahan, the Dhaka University professor, said Zaman “came very close” to crossing the line and explained it as a product of military institutional culture after August 5. “Military organisations … like to follow standing operating procedures, order, stability,” he said. But August 5, he added, was “a political rupture” that forced the army and the nation into uncertainty: about the interim government’s longevity, legitimacy and how it would deal with the military.
Those anxieties, Shahan said, likely pushed Zaman to speak. In principle, he said, it is reasonable for the army chief to say elections are needed for stability. But “when he set a specific timeline – within 18 months – that is beyond his role”, Shahan said. “It then appears as if he is dictating.”
Shahan added that the problem becomes sharper when that kind of specificity appears to respond to a party demand; he was referring to a time when only the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was repeatedly pushing for a vote timetable.
Eight months later, in May 2025, Zaman again weighed in, telling a high-level military gathering, according to local media reports, that his position had not changed and that the next national vote should be held by December 2025. After that, Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, a special adviser to Yunus, wrote on Facebook that “the army can’t meddle in politics” and argued that the military chief had failed to maintain “jurisdictional correctness” by prescribing an election deadline.
Military personnel stand in front of a portrait of then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on July 30, 2024 [Rajib Dhar/ AP Photo]
The shadow Hasina left
Another reason that analysts say the military’s role is being debated so intensely now is because of Bangladesh’s recent wounds.
During Hasina’s 15-year rule, human rights organisations argued Bangladesh’s security apparatus was often used for political control. Human Rights Watch has described enforced disappearances as a “hallmark” of Hasina’s rule since 2009.
When the United States sanctioned the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in 2021 over allegations of extrajudicial killings, the US Department of the Treasury said, “These incidents target opposition party members, journalists, and human rights activists.” Critics argue that security institutions became central to governance, and questions about how that machinery was used are now part of the post-Hasina political settlement.
Hossain, the former officer, said the Hasina-era legacy still echoes inside the top brass. “If you look at the leadership, the general, five lieutenant generals, and some major generals and brigadier generals, a lot of them were part of Hasina’s apparatus,” he said, “aside from a handful of professional officers”.
A report by Bangladesh’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances says disappearances were used as a “tool for political repression” and that the practice “reached alarming levels during key political flashpoints”, including in the run-up to elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024. The commission said it verified 1,569 cases of enforced disappearance.
In cases where political affiliation could be confirmed, the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing accounted for about 75 percent of victims, while the BNP and its affiliated groups accounted for about 22 percent. Among those “still missing or dead”, the BNP and its allies accounted for about 68 percent, while the Jamaat and its affiliates accounted for about 22 percent, the report said.
The commission also noted that the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the military-run intelligence agency, had been “accused of manipulating domestic politics and interfering in the 2014 parliamentary elections”, and argued that perceived alignment with the Awami League compromised its neutrality.
Several senior military officers, including 15 in service, are now facing trial in a civilian tribunal on charges of enforced disappearances, murders and custodial tortures.
The proceedings have become a delicate issue in civil-military relations, as cases against serving officers in civilian courts are rare in Bangladesh’s history.
Former army chief Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan wrote on Facebook that local media had reported disagreements over the “trial process” for officers accused of crimes against humanity and that those disagreements had created what he described as a “chasm” between the interim government and the army’s top leadership.
Hossain, the former officer, however, said he disagreed. “These trials are not defaming the army,” Hossain said. “Rather, they are a kind of redemption for the institution to recover from the stigma created by the crimes of some self-serving officers.”
He argued that accountability could motivate younger officers and reduce the risk of the military being politically exploited again. Rusho, the retired brigadier general, also argued that politicisation under Hasina was driven less by formal doctrine than by executive control over careers.
“Promotions, important postings, placements … they were influenced considerably by the executive branch,” he said. “When you influence postings, some people’s loyalty often gets diverted to political masters, [and] it affects … professionalism and capability.”
Kean of the International Crisis Group said the real test for Bangladesh now would be whether it can stop the security state from being reabsorbed into partisan politics.
“The military is going to remain a powerful institution in Bangladesh, with a level of influence in domestic politics,” he said. “One hopes that the lesson of the past 18 months is that the military is better to support civilian administrations rather than be in power directly – that it can be a stabilising force, and one that is ultimately committed to democracy and civilian leadership.”
But, he added, the onus to do that isn’t only on the generals. Civilian politicians, too, needed to resist the temptation to misuse the military. That alone, he suggested, would help Bangladesh keep the army in the barracks and politicians accountable to the people, not to men in khakis.
British PM Keir Starmer’s China visit is the first by a UK leader in eight years and marks a thaw in frosty relations.
Published On 29 Jan 202629 Jan 2026
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The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in the first trip of its kind by a British leader in eight years.
Starmer said before his trip that doing business with China was the pragmatic choice and it was time for a “mature” relationship with the world’s second-largest economy.
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“I have long been clear that the UK and China need a long-term, consistent and comprehensive strategic partnership,” Starmer said on Thursday.
During their meeting, Starmer told Xi that he hopes the two leaders can “identify opportunities to collaborate, but also allow a meaningful dialogue on areas where we disagree”.
Xi stressed the need for more “dialogue and cooperation” amid a “complex and intertwined” international situation.
The meeting between the two leaders in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday was due to last about 40 minutes, and will be followed by another meeting between Starmer and Chinese Premier Li Qiang later in the day.
Starmer is in China for three days and is accompanied by a delegation representing nearly 50 UK businesses and cultural organisations, including HSBC, British Airways, AstraZeneca and GSK.
The last trip by a UK prime minister was in 2018, when Theresa May visited Beijing.
Strengthening economic and security cooperation was at the top of the agenda during the Xi-Starmer meeting, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Katrina Yu.
“[Starmer] has the very big task of bringing this diplomatic relationship out of years of deep freeze, so the focus when he talks to Xi Jinping will be finding areas of common ground,” Yu said from Beijing.
China was the UK’s fourth-largest trading partner in 2025, with bilateral trade worth $137bn, according to UK government data.
Starmer is seeking to deepen those ties with Xi despite criticism at home around China’s human rights record and its status as a potential national security threat.
Besides business dealings, Starmer and Xi are also expected to announce further cooperation in the area of law enforcement to reduce the trafficking of undocumented immigrants into the UK by criminal gangs.
Relations between the UK and China have been frosty since Beijing launched a political crackdown in Hong Kong, a former British colony, following months of antigovernment protests in 2019.
London has also criticised the prosecution in Hong Kong of the pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai, who is also a British citizen, on national security charges.
Starmer’s trip to China comes as both Beijing and London’s relationship with the United States is under strain from President Donald Trump’s tariff war.
Trump’s recent threats to annex Greenland have also raised alarm among NATO members, including the UK.
Musk’s electric car company says it will invest $2bn in artificial intelligence start-up as part of pivot away from auto market.
Published On 29 Jan 202629 Jan 2026
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Tesla has reported its first-ever decline in annual revenue on a busy day for corporate earnings that also saw the release of results from Microsoft, Meta and Samsung Electronics.
Elon Musk’s electric car company said on Wednesday that revenue fell 3 percent year-on-year to $24.9bn in the final quarter of 2025. Revenue for all of 2025 was $94.8bn, down from $97.7bn the previous year.
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Net profit fell 61 percent to $840m in the quarter, taking profit for the year to $3.8bn, down sharply from $7.1bn in 2024.
The Austin, Texas-based company also revealed that it had agreed to invest $2bn in Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up xAI – the developer of Musk’s controversial Grok chatbot – as part of a push to lessen its reliance on the auto market.
“Together, the investment and the related framework agreement are intended to enhance Tesla’s ability to develop and deploy AI products and services into the physical world at scale,” the company said in its earnings report.
Tesla shares rose about 2.2 percent in after-hours trading.
Also on Wednesday, tech giants Microsoft, Meta and Samsung reported strong earnings in their latest reports to shareholders.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, reported a profit of $22.8bn on revenue of $59.9bn in the October-December period, a 6 percent rise year-on-year.
Meta shares surged nearly 7 percent in extended-hours trading.
Microsoft said profit rose 60 percent to $38.5bn in the final quarter, based on revenue of $81.3bn.
“We are only at the beginning phases of AI diffusion and already Microsoft has built an AI business that is larger than some of our biggest franchises,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.
“We are pushing the frontier across our entire AI stack to drive new value for our customers and partners.”
Despite its strong earnings, Microsoft’s announcement that capital spending hit a record $37.5bn in the second quarter stoked fears of an AI investment bubble, sending stock prices sharply lower.
Microsoft’s shares fell more than 6 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.
Samsung Electronics, the biggest producer of memory chips globally, reported a profit of 20.1 trillion won ($13.98bn) on revenue of 93.8 trillion won ($65.6bn), a more than three-fold rise from the previous year.
Montreal, Quebec, Canada – Canadian Muslim leaders are calling for an end to Islamophobic rhetoric and fearmongering, as the country prepares to mark the nine-year anniversary of a deadly attack on a mosque in the province of Quebec.
Stephen Brown, CEO of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), said Thursday’s anniversary is a reminder that Islamophobia in Canada “is not benign”.
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“It’s something that unfortunately kills people,” Brown told Al Jazeera. “[The anniversary] forces us to remember that there’s real consequences to hatred.”
Six Muslim men were killed when a gunman opened fire at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City on January 29, 2017, marking the deadliest attack on a house of worship in Canadian history.
The assault left Quebec City’s tight-knit Muslim community deeply shaken, spurred vigils and condemnation across Canada, and shone a spotlight on a global rise in anti-Muslim hate and radicalisation.
The Canadian government denounced the shooting as a “terrorist attack” against Muslims and pledged to tackle the underlying issues.
In 2021, it announced it was designating January 29 as the National Day of Remembrance of the Quebec City Mosque Attack and Action against Islamophobia.
But Brown said he was not sure whether the lessons learned after what happened in Quebec City were being fully remembered today, nearly a decade later.
“Right after the Quebec City mosque massacre, there really was a desire in society to try to mend some of the wounds and build some bridges,” he said.
“Unfortunately, what a lot of people are seeing 1769652192 – and especially for Muslims that live in Quebec – … is a massive return to using Islamophobia and spreading fear of Muslims for political gain.”
[Al Jazeera]
Laws and rhetoric
Brown pointed to a series of measures put forward by Quebec’s right-wing Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government that human rights groups say target Muslim Quebecers.
In power since 2018, the CAQ passed a law in 2019 to bar some public servants from wearing religious symbols on the job, including headscarves worn by Muslim women, Sikh turbans and Jewish yarmulkes.
The government justified the law, known as Bill 21, as being part of its push to protect secularism in the province, which in the 1960s underwent a so-called “Quiet Revolution” to break the Catholic Church’s influence over state institutions.
But rights advocates said Bill 21 discriminated against religious minorities and would have a disproportionately harmful effect on Muslim women, in particular.
As the CAQ’s popularity has plummeted in recent months, it has passed and put forward more legislation to strengthen its so-called “state secularism” model in advance of a looming provincial election later this year.
Most recently, in late November, the CAQ introduced a bill that would extend the religious symbols prohibition to daycares and private schools, among other places.
Bill 9 also bars schools from offering meals based exclusively on religious dietary requirements – such as kosher or halal lunches – and outlaws “collective religious practices, notably prayer” in public.
The attack on Quebec City’s largest mosque lasted less than two minutes [File: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]
“Quebec has adopted its own model of state secularism,” said the provincial minister responsible for secularism, Jean-Francois Roberge.
Roberge has rejected the idea that the bill was targeting Muslim or Jewish Quebecers, telling reporters during a news conference on November 27 that the “same rules apply to everybody”.
But the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) – which is involved in a lawsuit against Bill 21 that will be heard by the Supreme Court of Canada later this year – said Bill 9 “masks discrimination as secularism”.
“These harmful bans disproportionately target and marginalize religious and racialized minorities, especially Muslim women,” Harini Sivalingam, director of the CCLA’s equality programme, said in a statement.
According to Brown at NCCM, the Quebec government’s moves have sent “the message to society that there’s something inherently dangerous or wrong with being a visible, practising Muslim”.
He warned that, when people in positions of authority use anti-Muslim rhetoric to try to score political points, “it gives licence to those who already hold a lot of these Islamophobic views or hateful views to actually take it out on people”.
‘Hate continues to threaten’
At the federal level, Amira Elghawaby, Canada’s special representative on combating Islamophobia, said the Canadian government has shown a continued commitment to tackling the problem.
That includes through an Action Plan on Combatting Hate, launched in 2024, which has devoted millions of dollars to community groups, antifascism programmes and other initiatives.
But Elghawaby told Al Jazeera that Islamophobia has nevertheless been rising in Canada, “whether it’s through police-reported hate crimes [or] whether it’s Canadians sharing that they’re experiencing discrimination at work [and] at school”.
Three black stone plinths stand in a memorial to the victims of the attack, outside the Quebec City mosque, in 2022 [File: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/Al Jazeera]
According to Statistics Canada, 211 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported to police in 2023 – a 102-percent jump compared with the previous year. There was a slight increase in 2024 – the most recent year for which the data is available – with 229 incidents reported.
Elghawaby, whose office was established after another anti-Muslim attack killed four members of a single family in London, Ontario, in 2021, said the figures underscore “that hate continues to threaten Canadians”.
“Canada, despite a global reputation of being a country that welcomes people from around the world, does struggle with division, with polarisation, with the rise of extremist narratives,” she said, adding that remembering the Quebec City mosque attack remains critical.
“[The families of the men killed] don’t want the loss of their loved ones to be in vain. They want Canadians to continue to stand with them, to continue to stand against Islamophobia, and to do their part in their own circles to help promote understanding,” Elghawaby said.
“History can sadly repeat itself if we don’t learn from the lessons of the past.”
These are the key developments from day 1,435 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 29 Jan 202629 Jan 2026
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Here is where things stand on Thursday, January 29:
Fighting
The death toll from a Russian attack on a passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Tuesday rose to six, after the remains of several bodies were recovered from the wreckage, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said on the Telegram messaging app.
At least six people were injured in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov, said on Telegram.
Russian forces attacked several locations across Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing a 46-year-old man and injuring at least two other people, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Hanzha, said on Facebook.
One person was killed in a Ukrainian attack on the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional emergencies task force reported, according to the country’s TASS state news agency.
A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in the city of Enerhodar, in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Russia’s locally appointed official Yevhen Balitsky said, according to TASS.
Fedorov has ruled out installing anti-drone netting as a mode of defence, saying that “there are more effective ways to combat Russian attacks”, Ukraine’s Ukrinform news agency reported.
Military aid
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that France will deliver more “French aircraft, missiles for air defence systems, and aerial bombs” to Ukraine this year, following a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Regional security
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at an event in Paris that a 2035 target for rearming Europe “would be too late”.
“I think rearming ourselves now is the most important thing,” Frederiksen said. “Because when you look at intelligence, nuclear weapons, and so on, we depend on the US,” she added.
Switzerland plans to inject an additional 31 billion Swiss francs ($40.4bn) into military spending starting from 2028 by increasing sales taxes for a decade.
“The world has become more volatile and insecure, and the international order based on international law is under strain,” the Swiss government said, noting that other European countries have also been increasing their defence spending.
Politics and diplomacy
Vladislav Maslennikov, a top European Affairs official at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told TASS that restoring relations with the European Union will only be possible if European countries “cease their sanctions policy”, stop “pump[ing] weapons into the Kyiv regime, and sabotag[ing] the peace process around Ukraine.”
President Macron said at an event in Paris that European countries must focus on asserting their “sovereignty, on our contribution to Arctic security, on the fight against foreign interference and disinformation, and on the fight against global warming”.
“France will continue to defend these principles in accordance with the United Nations Charter,” said Macron, who has turned down an invitation for France to join Trump’s Board of Peace, which some critics say is an attempt to replace the United Nations.
Peace talks
United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that negotiations over Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which is part of the Donbas region that is now 90 percent occupied by Russian forces, are “still a bridge we have to cross” in talks between Russia and Ukraine.
“It’s still a gap, but at least we’ve been able to narrow down the issue set to one central one, and it will probably be a very difficult one,” Rubio said.
Energy
Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 639 apartment buildings in Kyiv remain without heat, with temperatures forecast to drop to -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight this week.
